Trump fires John Bolton as national security adviser
President Trump on Tuesday announced that he had fired embattled national security adviser John Bolton.
“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets.
The president and Bolton reportedly had clashed on North Korea and Afghanistan in recent weeks.
Bolton also took to Twitter to share his version of his ouster, which differed from the president’s. “I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow,’” he wrote.
Bolton also tweeted to a Washington Post reporter: “Let’s be clear, I resigned, having offered to do so last night,” according to the reporter, Robert Costa.
Bolton, a foreign policy hardliner, reportedly opposed the president’s decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David, a plan that Trump later canceled.
The pair had also butted heads on North Korea, with Bolton taking a harsh view of Kim Jong Un’s resumption of missile tests, which the commander-in-chief has brushed off.
Trump’s tweets came roughly an hour after the White House press office sent out a message announcing that Bolton would join Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at a joint briefing.
It also came about 22 hours after the president called reports of disagreements in the White House “fake news” in a series of tweets.
“A lot of Fake News is being reported that I overruled the VP and various advisers on a potential Camp David meeting with the Taliban. This Story is False!” he wrote.
“The Dishonest Media likes to create the look of turmoil in the White House, of which there is none.”
It is not clear whether the Camp David meeting factored into Trump’s decision to fire Bolton.
Bolton always seemed an unlikely pick to be Trump’s third national security adviser, with a worldview seemingly ill-fitted to the president’s more isolationist “America First” views.
He was a foreign policy hawk dating back to the Reagan administration and became a household name over his vociferous support for the Iraq War as the US ambassador to the UN under President George W. Bush.
Bolton even briefly considered running for president in 2016.
Inside the administration, he advocated caution on the president’s whirlwind rapprochement with North Korea and against Trump’s decision last year to pull US troops out of Syria.
He masterminded a quiet campaign inside the administration and with allies abroad to convince Trump to keep US forces in Syria to counter the remnants of ISIS and Iranian influence in the region.
Bolton was named Trump’s third national security adviser in April 2018 after the departure of Army Gen. H.R. McMaster.
